Saving Seafood

Remains of Lost 1800s Whaling Fleet Found

January 6, 2016 — NOAA archaeologists have discovered the battered hulls of two 1800s whaling ships nearly 144 years after they and 31 others sank off the Arctic coast of Alaska in one of the planet’s most unexplored ocean regions. 

The shipwrecks, and parts of other ships, that were found are most likely the remains of 33 ships trapped by pack ice close to the Alaskan Arctic shore in September 1871. The whaling captains had counted on a wind shift from the east to drive the ice out to sea as it had always done in years past. 

The ships were destroyed in a matter of weeks, leaving more than 1,200 whalers stranded at the top of the world until they could be rescued by seven ships of the fleet standing by about 80 miles to the south in open water off Icy Cape. No one died in the incident but it is cited as one of the major causes of the demise of commercial whaling in the United States. 

Read the full story at the Marine Link

Arctic Nations Seek to Prevent Exploitation of Fisheries in Opening Northern Waters

November 24, 2015 — Ruth Teichroeb, the communications officer for Oceans North: Protecting Life in the Arctic, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, sent a note this evening about new steps related to an issue I’ve covered here before – the rare and welcome proactive work by Arctic nations to ban fishing in the central Arctic Ocean ahead of the “big melt” as summer sea ice retreats more in summers in a human-heated climate.

Given how little is known about the Arctic Ocean’s ecology and dynamics, this is a vital and appropriate step.

Here’s her note about an important meeting in Washington in early December, which will likely be obscured as the climate treaty negotiations in Paris enter their final week at the same time:

The United States is hosting negotiations for an international Arctic fisheries agreement to protect the Central Arctic Ocean in Washington, D.C., on December 1 to 3. The five Arctic countries will meet for the first time with non-Arctic fishing nations to work on a binding international accord. This follows the declaration of intent signed in July by the Arctic countries.

The big question for this meeting is whether China, Japan, Korea and the European Union will attend and cooperate on a precautionary agreement to prevent overfishing given the dramatic impact of climate change in the Arctic.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Extreme diving, crucial to Arctic research

August 16, 2015 — How do algae react to the warming of the Arctic Ocean? How is it affecting wildlife in the fjords? To find answers, researchers rely heavily on divers who brave the icy waters to gather samples.

“Without them, we wouldn’t be able to successfully complete our projects,” admits Cornelia Buchholz, a marine biologist who is working at Ny-Alesund on Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago in the heart of the Norwegian Arctic.

Until the start of the 1960s, this town — the northernmost permanent human settlement in the world — was populated by coal miners.

Today it is entirely dedicated to science.

Between mid-April and the end of August when the sun never sets, dozens of researchers stay there.

The site, which boasts exceptional facilities despite its extreme location just a thousand kilometres (600 miles) from the North Pole, has a unique window on climate change, the effects of which are far more pronounced in the Arctic region.

Under water at Ny-Alesund, rising sea temperatures have already led to the appearance of new species of krill (small crustaceans) and fish, such as Atlantic cod and mackerel.

Read the full story from the Agence France-Presse at Yahoo News

THE NEW YORK TIMES: ‘No Fishing’ at the North Pole

July 21, 2015 — Fishing at the North Pole may seem ludicrous to a world raised on the notion of the top of the world as a deep-frozen wasteland, but at the rate the Arctic Ocean is melting it may not be long before fishing trawlers can operate in waters that have been inaccessible for more than 800,000 years.

So it was a good idea for the five nations that have territorial claims around the Arctic Ocean — the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark — to put a “No Fishing” sign on the high seas portion of the central Arctic until full scientific studies have been conducted.

The declaration to prevent unregulated fishing in the central Arctic acknowledged that fishing beyond the 200-mile exclusive economic zone of the coastal states is not likely to start in the near future.

Read the full story from The New York Times

 

Sea Warming Leads to Ban on Fishing in the Arctic

July 16, 2015 — WASHINGTON — The United States and four other nations that border the Arctic Ocean pledged on Thursday to prohibit commercial fishing in the international waters of the Arctic until more scientific research could be done on how warming seas and melting ice are affecting fish stocks.

The agreement came as an annual report on the world’s climate — released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the American Meteorological Society — said that temperatures on the ocean surface reached the highest levels in 135 years of record keeping.

The ocean’s rising temperature, which was particularly acute in the Northern Pacific last year, has drawn fish stocks farther north. That development, along with the shrinking levels of ice, has raised the prospect of industrial-scale fishing in the once-inaccessible Arctic.

“Climate change is affecting the migration patterns of fish stocks,”Norway’s foreign minister, Borge Brende, said in a statement after the declaration was signed in Oslo, the Norwegian capital. He said that Norway and the other coastal states in the Arctic — Canada, Denmark (on behalf of its territory of Greenland), Russia and the United States — had a “particular responsibility” to regulate fishing that is likely to occur there.

Read the full story at The New York Times